Jaew Phrik Reaper

A table sauce that takes its heat from a fat tincture and its aroma from raw chilli flesh. The placentas of six Carolina reapers infuse into 80 ml of oil at 65 degrees C. 30 ml of that tincture goes into this sauce. The other 50 ml is stored. The flesh of one pod, with the placenta removed, is minced raw into the sauce. The tincture on its own has almost no smell. The capsaicin is made in the placenta and the aroma is made in the flesh, so an extraction of one gives none of the other. The raw flesh restores the fruit note. Lime juice and fish sauce give the heat something to hold onto. A neat oil drizzle coats the mouth in one continuous film. A suspension in an acid base arrives in pulses instead. Serve it in a bowl with a teaspoon. One quarter of a teaspoon is one serving.

Mechanisms

two

An acid suspension delivers heat in pulses, a neat oil delivers it as a wall

Capsaicin in pure fat spreads over the mouth as one continuous film that does not break up. The burn is flat and constant and has no shape.

Put the same quantity of capsaicin into an acid water base and the fat breaks into droplets. The capsaicin then arrives in pulses. Between the pulses you taste the sour and the salt. The heat has a shape.

The acid also helps you directly. Sour taste makes you salivate. Saliva is the main way capsaicin is removed from the tissue of the mouth.

The toasted rice powder holds a partial suspension. It does not make a stable emulsion. The sauce separates in the bowl. This is correct for a jaew. Stir it before each use, or the last spoon out of the bowl is neat tincture.

30 ml tincture in 100 ml aqueous base 10 g toasted rice powder stir before each use

Raw flesh and fried flesh are two different ingredients

The esters that give Capsicum chinense its apricot and floral smell are small and volatile. They have low boiling points.

Fry that flesh in a paste at 130 degrees C or above and those esters leave or change. Maillard chemistry replaces them with heavier and rounder compounds. In a braise this is a gain. It is where depth comes from.

At the table it is a loss. There you want lift.

So use the same pod in two states. Fry one lot into the paste for depth. Leave one lot raw in the table sauce for the top note. This is not repetition. It is two different chemical states of one fruit.

flesh raw in the sauce flesh fried in a paste

The method

One recipe

Preparation

Jaew Phrik Reaper

The same record, read as a method. This page holds the reasoning; that one holds what to do.

Applied in

two recipes

Preparation

Nam Jim Jaew

A dipping sauce for grilled meat. It is a wet relish, not a pourable sauce. You drag the meat through it. Two chillies do two jobs. Toasted dried chilli gives roasted depth. Sliced fresh bird's eye chilli gives a sharp, immediate heat on top. Toasted glutinous rice, pounded coarse, takes up the free liquid and holds it against the meat. Fish sauce gives the salt. Lime gives the acid. A small amount of palm sugar rounds the edges. This is the doubled batch. The first batch was half this size and ran out on one bird.

First revision

Preparation

Nam Jim Jaew, Carolina reaper

The same toasted rice, toasted dried chilli, fish sauce and lime base as the plain jaew. The flesh of deveined Carolina reapers goes in raw, minced almost to a paste. Removing the placenta takes out most of the capsaicin and keeps the fruit and floral aroma of the flesh. In an acid base the heat arrives in pulses, not as one wall. Dose one pod, taste once, then wait 15 minutes. Reaper heat peaks late. Make it beside the plain jaew. The simplest way is one base split into two bowls, with the reaper going into one.

First revision

References

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